In WarGames, young computer gamer David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) hacks into a secret government computer that has just been put in charge of NORAD’s missile defense system, beginning a race against time to prevent World War III. In Hackers, young computer genius Dade Murphy (Jonny Lee Miller) is, at the age of eleven, tried and convicted for causing one thousand, five hundred and seven computer systems to fail, which also led to a seven point drop in the New York Stock Exchange. Seven years later, he is once more pulled into the world of hackers, and right into the middle of a battle between a sinister corporate hacker (Fisher Stevens). With a cursory examination, one would dismiss any notion that these two films might share a connection. But with a closer look, one might find that these two films have far more in common than at first believed, as well as the differences that make the latter film fall far short of the former.
An important thing to keep in mind with both of these films is the time they were released: WarGames in the 1980s, and Hackers just a decade later. Both of them were released at a time when technology was developing more and more into the style that we know now. Both of them were released as well during a time of turmoil that was caused, at least in part, but the advancement of that technology. In WarGames, several scenes occur in Lightman’s bedroom, where he uses his computer. For modern viewers, this may not seem like a big deal, but it was a brand new thing in the 1980s. The same goes with Hackers, which came out not long after the birth of the Internet and all that it has led to. Again, this likely doesn’t seem like any more important than the use of the home computer in WarGames, but it is a very large part of what both movies are.
That being said, both films have a strange way of explaining or showing things that no computer (at either time) could actually do in order to forward the plot. Whereas Hackers has rather stilted or strange dialogue that sounds more like something read from a textbook than something that anyone would actually ever say, WarGames just uses the time honored writer’s easy button of “Computers are magic!” While it is nice to see the application of technology in both cases to solve the problems presented by the plot, both films rely far too much on the audience being clueless as to how it actually works. This could technically be forgiven by the notion that a detailed explanation of the processes and everything involved would take up too much of the screen time and thus bring the pacing to a screeching halt. Even so, the writers should have been informed that if they weren’t going to put forward the effort, then the attempt should not have been made to begin with.
Both films also showcase a facet of fear that was brought on by the use of technology in both cases. In the case of WarGames, it was the fear of nuclear annihilation, something that was constantly feared in the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union almost immediately from the end of World War II up until the early 1990s. The fact that WOPR forcing the United States down the path to global thermonuclear war serves as the tension for a great deal of the film, and very much played on fears of 1980s society at the time, many of whom lived their lives knowing very well that where they lived could be the direct target of a Soviet missile strike. For them, the United States military was the only defense against such an incursion. But what if they were unable to prevent a terrible catastrophe, even from within their own walls? A chilling thought that had many audiences frightened at the prospect that such a thing could happen. It makes the film all the more gripping, with the audience on the edge of their seat, waiting with baited breath for the resolution to the crisis.
Hackers, being set in the time of the beginnings of the internet, brings a still quite relevant fear to the table in the form of cyberterrorism. Even today, this remains an issue in the cultural consciousness - best showcased with groups like Anonymous, LulzSec, and even government groups such as the NSA who spy on individuals, retrieve information, and put it to use as they see fit for their own purposes. Most of the activity in Hackers isn’t as harmful as that, save for the villain’s main plan, but at the time it was a major issue with the public at large in reality. The thought that absolutely nothing was safe, that someone could simply break their way into our home computers, or into the computers of businesses that hold important information and just take it, is even now a very crippling fear.
Beyond the theming of the technology and fear, however, the two films begin to diverge drastically. This is no better illustrated than in the two main characters, the aforementioned David Lightman and Dade Murphy. In WarGames, Lightman is an underachiever. Brilliant, lazy, and willing to hack into the school’s computer systems to change his grades to ones he thinks he deserves. By the same token, however, he’s largely innocent. He isn’t even intending to hack into the WOPR system, he does it completely by accident thinking that he might be able to play games from a new computer system, and in the end he is the one who encourages WOPR’s creator, Professor Falken to assist in stopping WOPR from causing World War III. Sure, he’s lazy and has some questionable morality in some cases, but he is unquestionably a decent human being.
Dade Murphy is likewise an underachiever in the latter half of his teens, like Lightman. The similarities begin to wane , and rapidly so, when it becomes clear that Dade cares nothing about his future and seems to only want to use his genius-level computer skills for completely frivolous reasons. To drive the point home on this almost from the beginning, the spends his first night back on a computer hacking into a local TV station to put on an episode of “The Outer Limits”. Unlike Broderick’s turn in WarGames, Miller’s Dade is rather schizophrenically between unlikeable or bland for the entire course of the film. In fact, that could be said for almost every character in Hackers that holds any sort of prominence except for Matthew Lillard’s character, who instead shifts rapidly between disturbing and annoying.
His disinterest is shown not to really care about his future, is really rather hateful towards his mother, and has absolutely no qualms about hacking computer systems to do anything from get back at someone for a prank to falsifying documents so that it appears that a man is dead. Quite frankly, like most of his cohorts, Dade seems to be completely uncaring in general save for a precious few scenes. Overall, there is just a very distinct lack of morality of any sort in Hackers, very much with the titular hackers having an “anything goes” mentality. In this way, it can’t even really be said that there is a hero of the film. A protagonist or protagonists, certainly, but there is really no one that we can identify as “good”. The main villain of the film is certainly worse than those he is attempting to frame for his crimes, but the question is by how much they are separated.
On the flip side of the coin, WarGames does not really have a “bad guy”, per se. The WOPR system, originally created to play games, has no real understanding of the billions of lives it could end by bringing its simulation into reality. Neither the sanctity of human life, nor the concept of futility had ever been taught to it. It’s not evil, it’s only doing what it knows in order to fulfill its primary objective – to win the game. If anything, the antagonist in that particular situation is man himself, for developing a system that he could so easily use to destroy himself.
In Hackers, the entire plot can pretty much be summed up with “I Threw It On the Ground” by the Lonely Island. The villain himself is played off as blatantly evil, but he is really not any worse than the people he is opposing. The only difference being that he works for a corporation and thus, due to the anti-establishment sentiment of the 90’s, is clearly evil. The system is corrupt and oppressive and terrible and the hackers are a bunch of freedom fighters against the man, man! Except they aren’t. They don’t do what they do because it helps people or fixes major issues in the world. In fact, the pseudo-environmental disaster that gets brought into the plot isn’t even really elaborated on or given all that much focus, waved off by a line of dialogue during the wrap up and is left feeling very tacked on. It’s clear that they want to get back at the guy for trying to get them all busted. This is revenge, not a righteous and justified crusade against “the man”, plain and simple.
In the end, nothing is learned. Fisher Stevens is arrested, the hackers apparently get all charges dropped (which is odd, considering the number of charges that should have been placed on them), and Dade goes on to have crazy hot pool sex with Angelina Jolie. So, in other words, Dade gets to screw someone over, and then screw Lara Croft. Nothing is learned, nothing is gained. Dade doesn’t develop at all as a character. In WarGames, Lightman learns a valuable lesson about not hacking into computers and bringing on nuclear armageddon (something that he’ll forget when he’s Ferris Bueller), more seriously that we get the anti-war message that sometimes the only winning move is not to play. That ultimately, war is a futile thing and that no one really ever wins. And it’s believable. In the end, there was actually a point to it all. Something was learned, development was had. Hackers, when you get down to it, has no point of any real substance, which hurts the whole.
That’s not to say that Hackers isn’t a good film. It’s watchable, and fairly decent. If you’re just in the mood to kill some time, you could at least watch it and get a laugh out of some of it (like dial up internet and ridiculously bulky computers). You just really can’t take it seriously. While it holds many similarities to WarGames, it is different in a number of respects, largely due to the time gap between the two films. They represent different eras of the development of technology, and they wear well the moral standing of their decades, for better or for worse. In the end, WarGames is the superior film, though Hackers is certainly enjoyable as well. Just don’t take it very seriously.
WarGames becomes to MGM and is available on Netflix Instant Play and anywhere movies are sold.
Hackers is the property of United Artists and is available anywhere movies are sold.
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